Tag: SQL Server

There was one time when I was delivering a Service using a tool that gathers performance data through the SQL Server Counters on Performance Monitor, I got surprised when I tried to review the data and there was no information. Then I checked the SQL Server counters directly on Performance Monitor and the counters were…

Azure DW what is it? Is it the same as SQL Azure but bigger? No. It is kind of…different. It is a full Cloud Service from Microsoft in the Microsoft Cloud (PaaS), multi-tenant, cloud-based data warehouse ‘Platform as a Service’ offering which elastically scales on demand. Separates storage and compute for elastic scale requirements regardless…

It is no news that SQL Server 2014 changed the Cardinality Estimator (CE). Ok. Even if it is not something new: What means CE? What is the impact of the new CE? And most important what SQL server 2016 propose to deal with it? The idea of this post is to answer those kind questions and give…

In a previous post How to consolidate Assessment Reports we looked at a method to consolidate the JSON output files from the DmaCmd.exe command line tool into SQL Server. Now lets look at a method to put some basic reports on top of that data. For this we will use PowerBi which you can download…

It’s almost that time again! Christmas day for data professionals! SQLBits !!! Hopefully a lot of readers will have heard of the SQLBits conference that runs every year in the UK, but if you haven’t then suffice to say it’s the largest Data conference in Europe and we are sending some of the team…

I think most people dealing with SQL Server understand that xp_cmdshell can be a bit of a security hole if not used correctly. But… how do you know it is being used appropriately? Wouldn’t it be a nice feature to be able to see exactly who is using xp_cmdshell, when and why? You can with…

Starting from Data Migration Assistant (DMA) v 2.1, DMA provides command-line support for running assessments in unattended mode. This feature helps to run the assessments at scale. The command-line version of DMA generates the assessment results in the form of a JSON or CSV file. You can assess multiple databases in a single instantiation of…

In a recent engagement, I had need of an Extended Event to gather range scans on my target instance. The overall premise was to determine which queries were driving the large number of range_scans being reported by a recent health check. The target instance was a SQL 2008 R2 SP3 build. So… lets create an…

How can I use Row Level Security to control which users see certain data in my data table? Here’s what I want to achieve. I want to create an SSRS report which multiple users from different teams can access. The report will use the same underlying table for each user so I need to…